Be Excellent To Each Other

Eternity. Like too many on the hard left, he seems to be much better [1] at opposing things than proposing them [2].

[1] fairly poor
[2] beyond useless.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell says "a soft coup" has been launched against Jeremy Corbyn by "elements in the Labour Party".

Mr McDonnell accuses unnamed "plotters" and the "Murdoch media empire" of a "coordinated and fully resourced" coup.
In an article for Labour Briefing, he said "the plotters" were using "an exceptionally well resourced dark arts operation" to "destroy Jeremy Corbyn".

One former Labour minister described Mr McDonnell's comments as "unhinged".

In his article, Mr McDonnell accuses "the coup perpetrators" of "a covert strategy" to destabilise Mr Corbyn because they had failed to dislodge him directly through a leadership election.

BREAKING: The #SoftCoup has started. The strategy is to cause division through social media. Take a look at this video and share it widely. https://t.co/PUpmYCdPFg

Crumbs
The Frozen-esque avatar is even worse though.

https://twitter.com/Rachael_Swindon/status/836327062327656448

Oh. My.

Aaron Banks and Farage are trying to expel UKIP MP Douglas Carswell from UKIP. They reason that he is soft on immigration and that he stood in the way of Farage being knighted (odd that someone against unelected elites is so desperate for this and/or joining the Lords).

They have made it so he is being summoned to the chair of he party.

Only one hitch. He can only be expelled at the agreement of the UKIP Parliamentary Party.

Said party is currently comprised of one person; Carswell himself.

:DD

Yes, politics at the far extremes of the spectrum (whether Left or Right) sure makes for quasi-independent, contra-rotating, involuntary radial eyeball movements on the part of the practitioners, that's for sure.

Good grief... thank fook UKIP have only one MP, right Curio?

The state pension age may have to rise to levels above the average lifespan of men in the UK's poorer areas, MPs say.

The Work and Pensions Committee said the age would need to rise above 70 to make the current policy of increasing the pension amount sustainable.

State pensions rise each year by the inflation rate or whichever is highest of average earnings or 2.5% - as part of the so-called pensions triple-lock.

The government said it was committed to the policy until 2020 at least.

As a result of triple-lock policy, the state pension has risen by £1,100 since 2010.

In November the committee said the policy should be scrapped.

The committee commissioned the Institute for Fiscal Studies to estimate the extra state pension age increases that would be needed to maintain expenditure at about 6% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

It found that the state pension age would need to be 70.5 years by 2060.

But the committee's research found that in deprived areas of England and Scotland, male life expectancy was below that level.

Currently, the state pension age is set to be 67 for both men and women by 2028.

The committee said:

* Male life expectancy was below 70.5 in 162 areas in Scotland
* The lowest male life expectancy was 62.5 years in the Parkhead West and Barrowfield area of Glasgow. In that area, female life expectancy was 70.1 years
* Male life expectancy was below 70.5 in 26 areas in England, including Blackpool, Manchester, Teesside, Leicester, east London and the Wirral
* The lowest male expectancy in England was 67.5 years in the centre of Blackpool
* By contrast, male life expectancy in the area of Westminster, which includes Mayfair and Covent Garden, was 92.9 years, 25 years higher

Frank Field, committee chairman, said: "With the triple-lock in place, the only way state pension expenditure can be made sustainable is to keep raising the state pension age.

https://twitter.com/Rachael_Swindon/status/836327062327656448

Oh. My.

Is a soft coup akin to a slow phase out whereas a hard coup is 'we need to talk?'.

A soft coup is where they use padded pitchforks with corks on the tines.

How can you tell the difference between a determined troll and someone who just disagrees with you? If they’re a troll, you’ll find they’ve sent other “tweets that seek to undermine Jeremy Corbyn”.

Gosh. It’s so sinister. I know.

Do say: McDonnell himself seems to be experiencing some disunity.

:D

To be fair I got the whole pick-up-the-towel thing way before suggesting sleeping with interested third parties.

MrsA gets annoyed with my doing that and has decided it was because when i was a teenager I'd "gotten used to having a houseboy in Oman to do that stuff for me". Which i disagree with.

You had a houseboy to sleep with interested third parties for you?

:D

To be fair I got the whole pick-up-the-towel thing way before suggesting sleeping with interested third parties.

And I am sure you all ate fruit for breakfast. Can you cast your mind back to breakfast? You’re all so young and thrusting that you probably don’t remember the time that I do, when pineapples came only in a tin with a gloopy syrup. And pineapples were thought so generally exotic 100 years ago that architects would place them as finials on the top of the top of railings or pillars or other architectural features

Our Foreign Secretary made a speech yesterday. Somewhere within it is an argument for the benefits of free trade, but were it not published on GOV.UK I'd be convinced it was a parody.

I was in the classroom, I asked the girls, I said who’s your favourite author? And what do you think they said? That’s right. Congratulations to the front row for paying attention. They all as one virtually shouted out J.K. Rowling. I then asked them various other questions to which I’m sure you all know the answers about who is the headmaster and so on and so forth, and they all knew that stuff. I hope I’m not being vulgar if I say that more sales of Harry Potter worldwide mean more business for UK publishing. Don’t they? And I hope it’s not too crude to say that means more jobs for people in this city, indeed more probably for all I know, more publishers lunches in Soho. I’m not saying that you can draw a straight line from an overflowing classroom in the Punjab to an overflowing restaurant in Dean Street, but the connection is there.

His writing style reminds me of Mali

Our Foreign Secretary made a speech yesterday. Somewhere within it is an argument for the benefits of free trade, but were it not published on GOV.UK I'd be convinced it was a parody.

Currently in politics if your opinion differs from someone else you either make shit up, invent a conspiracy or just say "Well yes but at least I'm not PETER SUTCLIFFE". Compromise just seems further away than it ever did.

I mean, it's certainly true that they were used in architecture, but I'm not sure about as recently as 100 years ago.

There's one on top of St. Paul's Cathedral, though:

I've thought long and hard as to why this should be, but haven't really come up with an answer. I can't really believe people these days are inherently more conceited and less able to absorb empirical facts and realities than they were (as individuals), say, 10 or 20 years ago; it surely has to be something to do with the changing ways of interacting with like-minded, and therefore polarised groups.

Plus, let's face it, these days to be seen to compromise and/or concede points in an argument (especially an internet argument) is construed as weakness, by default.